Hate Log was an experiment in data visualization and a collaboration between choreographer Amy Lewis, visual artist Katie Lewis, technologist Christopher Mentzel, and musican Bill Wolter. Starting out as a personal journal of artist director Amy Lewis, Hate Log explores the necessity of the mundane in the creation of beauty. Each artist individually created work in their own medium (visual art, choreography, technology, and music) based on the same data: a 21 event record of everyday situations that caused distress and upset. Each medium interacts with the other, and the viewers’ participation influences the art. The source data generates a system of patterns, raising the question: is the accumulation of everyday events necessary to the creation of an extraordinary life? With the corollary: can this accumulation of the mundane transform into beauty?

For this collaboration I responded to Amy Lewis’ daily log of events that caused emotional upset. She chose six categories that a particular event could fall into: fear, disappointment, awoken, interrupt, thwarted, and disorder. In response, I created six sculptures that represent each of these categories. Each sculpture has a pattern that is dictated strictly by Lewis’ data reflecting my own interests of working within a structured system. I chose common everyday materials such as paper, wood, metal, thread, glass, and foam to further explore and evoke the idea of the accumulation of the mundane, transforming into something unexpected and possibly beautiful.